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Baked Sprats

A baked fish dish of sprats coated in bread crumbs and herbs, topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Sprats

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the fine herbs with a little pepper and coarse sea salt, then add the bread crumbs.

  2. Remove scales from the sprats using a clean cloth.

Layer and bake

  1. Spread some of the mixed bread crumbs on a baking dish.

  2. Arrange a layer of sprats on the crumbs without overlapping.

  3. Sprinkle the sprats with more mixed bread crumbs, repeating for three layers.

  4. Top with a generous layer of bread crumbs.

  5. Dot the top with small pieces of butter and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sprats
The main fish, forming the layers that give the dish its substance and flavour.
Bread crumbs
Form the layers between and on top of the fish, absorbing moisture and helping the dish hold together while baking.
Butter
Melts over the top during baking, adding richness and promoting gentle browning.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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